DHL introduces new direct Shanghai-US, Beijing-Hong Kong flights

BY OUR AVIATION CORRESPONDENT

May 13, 2005: DHL has introduced two new direct overnight express services between Shanghai and the United States and between Beijing and Hong Kong, enabling it to offer late pick-up, cut-off and earlier delivery times.

The daily DHL Shanghai-US flight will be operated by Northwest Airlines with a Boeing 747-200 freighter and the four times weekly DHL Beijing service will use a Cathay Pacific A330-200 passenger aircraft from DHL's Central Asia Hub in Hong Kong.

The new DHL services, which were introduced during the latter part of April, follow the recent addition of a new dedicated overnight express service between Nagoya and DHL's Central Asia Hub in Hong Kong.

The daily DHL Shanghai-US flight directly connects Shanghai with Anchorage in the US and onward to DHL's hubs in Los Angeles and Cincinnati, feeding into DHL's US network.

The flight will be transferred to DHL's Air & Ground Hub in Wilmington, Ohio, upon completion of the expansion in the fall of 2005. DHL is investing $300 million in this new facility, part of a larger $1.2 billion network investment programme.

Shanghai is also directly connected to DHL's Central Asia Hub in Hong Kong, via a direct flight between Hong Kong and Shanghai operated by Dragonair. The four times weekly DHL Beijing service will operate on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday inbound to DHL's Central Asia Hub in Hong Kong, one of DHL's two major hubs in the Asia Pacific region.

The outbound DHL service from Hong Kong to Beijing will operate on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Besides Beijing, DHL also offers direct connections to Shanghai from Hong Kong and connects Guangzhou and Shenzhen by road to Hong Kong. The addition of these two new services brings the total number of destinations served by DHL's dedicated air network in Asia Pacific to 27, and the number of aircraft serving DHL's existing dedicated air operations in the region to over 20.

According to Jerry Hsu, president of DHL Express for Greater China & Korea, China is today one of the fastest growing markets in DHL's global network, registering an annual growth rate of 50-60% in 2004.

Operating in China for almost twenty years, DHL has embarked on a five-year $273 million strategic investment programme as part of a wider initiative to reinforce its market leadership as an integrated one-stop supply chain solutions provider in China with both international and domestic offerings. The company's joint venture DHL-Sinotrans is the market leader in China with a 40 per cent share of the express delivery market.